Ambrosia Maple & Black Walnut Neck-Through Bass

[Traynor]

I've began to embark on my second attempt at building a bass. My first bass, a 30" scale 4-string fretless, was a learning experience. Although it turned out well, I made a decent amount of mistakes and it was a learning experience. I'm going to apply what I've learned to this build.

^ My first sketch of the design, done on a worksheet during geometry class.

^ A proportional, scale vector drawing. The scale length is 32" and it is a neck-thru design.

^ The same drawing, but with colored boxes highlighting different pieces of wood. The blue is maple, while the green and pink are walnut

^ The walnut lumber I will be using for the 2 sides

^ The maple for the neck. Although this piece looks discolored, after planing and sanding the color will look uniform.

I'll continue to post updates as I get a chance to work on this.

 

[gsnad2000]

completely unique, i like that. Is it going to be fretless with red marker lines like the image?

 

[Traynor]

completely unique, i like that. Is it going to be fretless with red marker lines like the image?

No, I forgot to add that it's fretted. I use fretfind2d to make my vectorized fretboards, and the lines are red by default, i just forgot to change them to grey.

 

[Traynor]

Sorry about the lack of updates as of late. The behavior of my mentally unstable landlord gave my family no choice but to move out. Thankfully, the place I'm staying at has a garage with all the tools I'll need to complete this build.
I have made some pretty major design changes to the body.

When I planed the rock maple for the neck, I encountered a pleasant surprise.

^^^It's spalted! Not only is it spalted maple, but there's the occasional birdseye throughout the piece of lumber. An unexpected surprise.

The walnut for the body and the maple for the neck. The jointer here isn't level, so it doesn't work properly at the moment. As a result, I have to wait on gluing up the neck and body.

A full-scale printout of the bass on top of the wood.

Currently I'm in the process of making a full-scale template of the whole bass out of masonite. When it is complete, I will continue posting updates.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

Cool build! What you have there is Invalid Link Removed, also called Wormy Maple. The ambrosia beetle bores into the wood and the "spalt" is due to fungus the beetle brings with it. Very cool wood!

 

[Hopkins]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I would highly recommend using that ambrosia maple as a neck wood. The spalt and worm holing make it pretty undesirable for something that needs to be as structurally rigid as a bass neck. Its much better suited for a body top, or something that is more aesthetic than structural.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I would highly recommend using that ambrosia maple as a neck wood. The spalt and worm holing make it pretty undesirable for something that needs to be as structurally rigid as a bass neck. Its much better suited for a body top, or something that is more aesthetic than structural.

While not intending to be a voice of dissent, I have used it in a 5 string bass build as a neck wood and it held up fine.

 

[Hopkins]

While not intending to be a voice of dissent, I have used it in a 5 string bass build as a neck wood and it held up fine.

You may have gotten lucky, or it may work fine 99 times out of 100. I just wouldn't want to base a neck on a wood that by nature (literally) is structurally compromised.

 

[michaelwayneharwood]

You may have gotten lucky, or it may work fine 99 times out of 100. I just wouldn't want to base a neck on a wood that by nature (literally) is structurally compromised.

That's a fair statement. I am probably not the best person to give advice as I tend to push the envelope a bit. My philosophy is that if something doesn't work out I can always make another bass, but other's may not share that.

 

[ctmullins]

Hopkins meant to say "highly recommend not using". I was about to say the same thing. If you decide to use it anyway, try to ascertain which end is less compromised, and use that as the neck end.

 

[Hopkins]

Hopkins meant to say "highly recommend not using". I was about to say the same thing. If you decide to use it anyway, try to ascertain which end is less compromised, and use that as the neck end.

Yes, I missed a word there, good catch Todd.

 

[Traynor]

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I would highly recommend using that ambrosia maple as a neck wood. The spalt and worm holing make it pretty undesirable for something that needs to be as structurally rigid as a bass neck. Its much better suited for a body top, or something that is more aesthetic than structural.

To test the strength of the wood, I took a scrap piece of the ambrosia maple I have that was about 1/8 inch thick and tried to see how much force it could handle. I had to use about 50 pounds of force before it even began to make cracking sounds, let alone breaking. It's just as sturdy as the normal rock maple I used for my last build. This wood is locally grown and was kiln dried properly after being cut into lumber.

Anyways, heres a sneak preview of the masonite template I've been working on (This is a picture of the back of it)

Still a bit of sanding and filing left to do before the template is done, but its close to being finished.

 

[Traynor]

A little unconventional having to cut it out before gluing...

...But it turned out fine. No harm done.

After sanding all the glue off, I did some neck carving.

I used a rasp and a file, rather than the belt sander (which i used for my first build). The amount of control hand tools give you is great, much more precision than a sander. I know this is a little out of order, but I have it all planned out. I ordered my fretboard from LMII and my truss rod from Warmoth, so now I'm waiting on those.

 

[Traynor]

Oh geez. I really abandoned this thread...

As you can probably see, there's quite a lot more going on in this picture than the last one I posted. I sort of forgot about this thread because I was sharing my progress photos on Instagram and Facebook, and it would take far too long for me to gather all of those and post them here. I gave the body an extremely curvy, ergonomic shape and turned the upper horn into a pseudo-scroll. For the pickups, I chose generic P-Bass split coils, hidden by a purpleheart pickup cover/ramp. The electronics cavity was routed on the front, directly underneath the purpleheart electronics cover where the volume and tone knobs are positioned. The fretboard is Indian Rosewood with flamed maple and bloodwood fret lines. Speaking of bloodwood...

While thinning out the headstock, I got a little overzealous and the headstock ended up being too thin for the bushings to tighten onto the tuners. I knew I needed to add more wood to the headstock, and I had a nice supply of flamed maple and bloodwood veneer, so I went to town. A 4-layer 2.4mm headstock veneer provides the extra thickness I needed, while also making the back of the neck look extremely classy. This photo is a few days old, so it was not yet properly sanded, hence the lumpiness. Currently I'm very close to finishing this bass. I installed all of the hardware to make sure everything lined up correctly. I know that you're supposed to put on the hardware after the finish, but I was very concerned about how things would line up, being that the scale length is a measly 29", the neck is super thin, and I wanted to check for dead spots in the fretboard. It's a good thing I checked, because I've spent about 3 hours today stringing up the bass, playing it, then taking off the strings to sand down problem spots on the fretboard. After some more sanding overall, I will start applying the Danish oil finish.

 

[Traynor]

BUMP!!!

Many, many years (nearly a decade!) later I never properly finished this bass. I was a senior in high school and needed to make it presentable for the art show before graduation, so I put some danish oil on the bass and got some cheap china hardware just to get it looking "complete enough" for an art show. I put a cheap piezo under the bridge and it played decently well - but it was incomplete. I eventually took all of the hardware off, removed the electronics, and refinished the bass. Many coats of wipe-on poly, some wetsanding, and eventually it had a more durable and aesthetically pleasing finish.

And then life happened. I got a driver's license, a full time job, etc. Spent so much time and money working on my truck, I didn't have any time/money to continue this build the way I wanted to. This bass was stored almost like an artifact for a while. When I moved out and got my own place, I kept this bass stored safely in a case. I would tell people about how I used to make instruments, I was getting good at it, and never finished this one. But as the years went by I realized it's finally time to actually finish this thing. My mentor who taught me everything I know about woodworking passed away a few years ago, and now I feel an even stronger urge to finish this project that I started with him nearly a decade ago.


The main logistical challenge with finishing this bass is the pickups. It's a thin body, and because of the neck-through construction the surface of the fretboard is only a couple millimeters above the body. I decided to try this set of EMG P set pickups that I had, and turns out they are slim enough to fit PERFECTLY!

And I have a spare Badass III that seems like it would fit fine. It's off-center in the photo because I haven't actually installed it yet, just checking if the saddles would be at the proper height for this bass. Gotta figure a few other things out, but the ball is now rolling!

 

[ctmullins]

Hey wow, that’s great!